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“ When I stayed in another prison in Congo, an 86-year-old inmate told me that before the Europeans came, a criminal had to stay under a mango tree to be punished. The villagers would gather round and everyone would say something positive about him and he would start to feel guilty and repent.

But I don’t want to oversimplify. In other cases, criminals were wrapped in banana leaves and set on fire.

— Jan de Cock

(via mogadonia, comicallyvintage)

Stephen Hawking: “Humans have entered a new stage of evolution”

Is Democracy for the Demos? I recently finished Étienne de La Boétie’s The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. The book is powerful, indeed. The essence of his argument is that the tyrant rules by the will of the people, as no other means exists for one man to control the fates of millions.

Neoliberalism’s early history The members of this colourful alliance against neoliberalism are as united in their opposition to neoliberalism as they are diverse. This suggests that neoliberalism cannot be too clearly defined as a concept. Rather, it is a broad umbrella under which very different groups with various points of view can meet. In the church of anti-neoliberalism, there is a place for anyone who believes that neoliberalism stands in the way of reaching his or her political goals. This may also explain the lack of any clear and coherent definition of neoliberalism among its dissenters.

“ The French revolutionaries somehow managed in 1789, without being able to tweet to each other: ‘Big demo planned outside Bastille.’ The Iranians of 2009 look likely to fail, in spite of the invention of Twitter in the intervening 220 years.

— Gideon Rachman (via hermenauta)

“ Of course, Marx wanted to destroy capitalism because he thought it didn’t go far enough in remaking the world in man’s image and organising society according to man’s needs and desire. Today’s sorry excuses for Marxists and anti-capitalists think capitalism has gone too far in its development of the forces of production and encouragement of consumerism.

I’m with Marx. Let’s replace capitalism with something even more dazzlingly cocky and human-centric. But let’s first deal with the luddites, locavores and eco-feudalists who have given anti-capitalism a bad name.

— Brendan O’Neill

“Itens compartilhados” no Google Reader Não tenho conseguido atualizar as sugestões de leitura por aqui, mas comecei a usar o Google Reader para ler notícias e blogs no celular. Estou compartilhado o que leio de interessante pelo próprio Shared Items do Reader, mais fácil do que postar aqui.

So maybe the slackers had it right after all In the cold glare of a recession, everything looks different: We’ve got no house to lose, no career to dash, no school-aged children in need of pricey Wii gaming systems.

Como os neandertais foram extintos: nós devoramos eles

“Foreign aid to Africa has turned the continent into a ‘giant welfare state’ and is one of the direct causes for the rise in poverty rates from 11% to 66% in recent times”.

Deng Undone The year 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the beginning of market reforms in China — and perhaps the third anniversary of their ending. Driven by a near obsession with economic growth, Beijing has extended the state’s reach into the economy.

Ron Paul sobre os austríacos e os keynesianos.

Wolfram Alpha Mais aqui: First Look at Wolfram Alpha’s Impressive (and Fun) Knowledge Computation. (via aleatorio)

Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the wheel? “The general sequence of friction-reducing inventions is thought to have been runners, rollers, rollers held in place by guides, rollers held in place by guides and thickened on the ends to make them roll straighter, the wheel and axle, and from there it’s pretty much a straight shot to the Chevy Impala”.